Transformers: Rally
by DarkMagicWhiteLight
Summary: Pilot chapter up, an original series, set in more-or-less the present day, in hopefully original settings. "It had been ten months ago, that the first faint dawn had given shades to the long dark in the deeps. If it could be called a state of sleep, suppose that which sleeps may stir."


Lynne cradled her head in her hands. A knot of pain was developing right behind her brows. It had been there for a few days, now- starting as a niggle or a nudge and growing, developing into what she was sorely tempted to describe as a shard of white-hot metal, lodged in the cranium. It was a familiar pain. She'd had enough time over the ten months it had came and went to become accustomed to it.

She stared at the paper on the desk through her fingers, not comprehending the figures arranged on the page. They didn't register anymore than the teachers' words, falling feathery about her ears. She wondered.

Because, this was something she knew, right? The pain, yes, but not that. Not the writing on the paper or the lesson today, well, maybe she did, but that wasn't the point. Because the pain wasn't all that had come and gone over the last ten months, was it? It was something, something... something that was there, and not. Something right on the edge of hearing; at the tip of her tongue; a thought she was nearly having, once pondered and forgotten halfway through. She didn't recognise it, so her mind wrapped it up in pain and presented it to her as a headache. That was the thing.

She wondered if it would be gone by the evening. If she would be able to sleep without it there.

This was enough. Lynne packed away her things, tersely told the teacher she would be at the matrons' office, and left. If the teacher made a fuss, she didn't register it, and she wouldn't remember either way. Her headache was throbbing, now, in an irregular pattern like if the teacher was still lecturing her from inside her head. It was beggining to tug at the back of her throat.

Rather than going to the matron, she detoured into the girls' toilets, determined not to see another person for the rest of the day. Her throat was burning as the pain caused her to bring up bile and acid only to be shudderingly swallowed again. Her first action was to lock herself in a cubicle and expell the next wave into the bowl.

* * *

><p>Something that had been sleeping shuddered as it's innards spasmed. If the sensation had been enough to wake it, it may have began to feel a slight sense of panic at it, as any person would. Especially seeing as his kind had not the sort of internal structure evolved to ever make such human reactions.<p>

In its youth, the earth had taken a prisoner, and laid it to rest in the deep caverns carved out by molten rock. And rest it had, undisturbed in the dark. Hidden from sight, from hearing, from the discovery of the creatures that walked the earth afterwards by a crust of igneous rock, renewed by further flows, and warmed by the pools of magma at the centre of the mountain. Dead or sleeping, unmoving, secret.

* * *

><p>Lynne stumbled back out into the corridor, feeling empty and even sicker. She leaned against the wall, sliding down until her bottom met the floor. Looking up, she met a pair of green irises. Her friend wore an expression so old fashioned, it was prehistoric.<p>

"So, are you pregnant, then?" he said. She stared at him, trying to understand what she had just heard.

"Wh-what?"

"You pregnant, then?"

"Whu- no!" she ground the palm of her hand into her brow and tried to focus on him, "Feel sick. So piss off."

Olly slumped down beside her. He rummaged through the detritus of schoolbooks, tatty papers, and forgotten crusts before pulling a bottle out of his bag (the bag was something of a phenomenon, somehow managing to be saggier and at least twice as heavy as anyone elses' while having more or less the same content). The liquid inside was an eye-wateringly bright blue, the sort of hue associated with such ingredients as pure artificial additives and a large selection of E-numbers. Someone had managed to get half-way through it, probably as much as they could before their brains gave up and started fizzing. He handed it to Lynne.

"My self-preservation is telling me not to mindlessly swallow a bright blue drink, Olly. Do I want to know where you got it?"

"Louis has a stash. He was drinking them on the bus and he'd already had five," said Olly, "He'd got about three more in his bag, too, last I looked. His eyes were goin' in different directions." He placed his hand on his forehead and moved the fingers around as a snail might move its eyestalks, "I'm trying to get rid of as many as I can, 'cause I'm going to end up being the one to deal with him tonight."

"Oh?" she said, still subjecting the bottle to wary investigation, "Why will you?"

"I'm playing him on his new game tonight. I don't want to play him loopy," Olly shuddered, "He's a nightmare to deal with when he's that loopy."

Lynne stared at the bottle. The liquid inside didn't become any less blue or garish, so she sighed and took off the lid. It turned out to taste vaguely of soap bubbles and the actual bubbles didn't do anything to help the sick feeling in her belly. She tried not to bring it back up, as the thought of blue sick wasn't proving to be an appealing one. If anything, the mental image was adding to her headache. She made another attempt but thought better of it and replaced the lid, "You're out to make me sicker."

"I just want to make sure you don't dehydrate and go loopy as well. I don't want to deal with two mentals," he huffed, "Why I seem to think this would be any different from usual I have no idea, but there it is."

"So you give me the thing that's making other people loopy? I can tell you've really thought this out," the sickly feelings were refusing to leave, even more stubbornly than they had before, culminating in a familiar and very unwelcome certainty. She shoved the bottle back into his hand, getting upright and back into the toilets as quickly as she could while Olly cringed.

* * *

><p>Lava had long since vacated the tubes, leaving smooth tunnels through the rock. The magma had made a retreat back into the deeper reaches and did not warm the sleeping beings as before. The air in a deep cave ought to remain still and the temperature stable, but there was a faint stirring of a breeze. Time, wind and rain had breached the barriers of rock in some places; enough to let in the weather and allow the slivers of sunlight to illuminate the great mounds of buried metal.<p>

It had been ten months ago, that the first faint dawn had given shades to the long dark in the deeps.

If it could be called a state of sleep, suppose that which sleeps may stir.

Something little, inconsequential; a spasm, a glitch in the system, a spark long left dormant and coaxed back to stuttering life. Something in the system flickered long enough to be picked up. The sound of faint fizzing punctuated the silence; a small screen began to blare light. A human observer might have recognised this paticular space - it didn't differ greatly from a cockpit in an aeroplane except built for more than one or two pilots, and for pilots much taller than one might initially imagine. Surroundings clocked, the eye draws to shapes seperate from the architecture. Some are heaped, others laid spread-eagled. The human observer might have likened them to giant toys, left where they had been thrown.

The bright spotlight cast by the screen flickered into static once, twice, and stabilised into a picture that the human observer would almost definately recognise. Loading screens are part and parcel with any civilisation that uses computers (and cause annoyance to every single one of them, topped only by that abomination known as an 'error message').

The little computer finished deciding, its course of action plotted with atomic precision. Incredible as the situation of being trapped under tonnes of rock was, there was a protocol it could follow:

Recon and repair.


End file.
